Does "Chess" Exist?

Computer argument:

1. man creates and programs a machine to make coffee (carries out all the functions starting with getting the ground coffee beans from a jar, and finishes with a fresh cup of coffee
2. if the man verifies the coffee bean jar is full, the machine will successfully make a cup of coffee every single time

Suppose the jar is empty and the man forgets to check:

1. man hits start button, the machine carries out all if its functions perfectly, the way it always does. 
2. no cup of coffee is made because of the man's error

So when the man makes sure the jar is full, and a cup of coffee is made, who "made the coffee"? The machine, the man, both? If you're inclined to say the machine, consider how the man programmed the machine to create the coffee exactly according to his own specifications. Isn't it the same as a person pounding a nail into a board with a hammer?  Who pounded in the nail... the man, not the hammer. So it seems that the man is "making the coffee", but it doesn't seem the same as the man actually physically making the coffee does it? Moving on:

1. the man starts the "coffee making" machine which takes 10 minutes so he takes a quick shower
2. the man's wife sees the process
3. who should the woman think is making the coffee?

Here you might be able to start to see the problem.  If you agree with the statements before this scenario, is the man "making the coffee" while he is in the shower?  "Making the coffee" starts to become a generalized phrase, but can mean totally different things. If you don't agree:

1. man starts the machine, and fills an enormous coffee bean jar sufficient to last 15 years while the machine is continually running
2. the man dies shortly after
3. 15 years later the last cup of coffee is sold to a gentleman who wonders...
4. who made my coffee?

machines don't know how to make coffee.  they get no pleasure from it, they aren't able to taste anything, and they can't determine what tastes humans like. the machine is simply carrying out the tasks it was programmed by the man to complete.  so who "made my coffee?"... the dead man?  you see here you ARE witnissing coffee being made... just as you ARE witnissing a computer "playing chess". Computers:

1. you witniss two programmed computers "playing chess" "against each other"
2. is it even "chess"?

Due to lack of nothing else to call this, 99% of all people would see this and think, "Oh wow! They are playing chess!"  But are they really? Is the machine really making coffee? Are the computers really playing chess? Most of you criticize oin for his post, but does the computer scenario of "making coffee" equate to the human scenario of "making coffee"? Does the word "chess" when referring to watching computers execute programmed commands equate to the word used to describe two grandmasters playing?

Now think on your own how two brand new players' idea of "chess" is not consistent with two grandmasters' idea of chess. Think about if someone asked you what your hobbies are and you said, "I like to play chess". If the person asking knows nothing about it, that's just about the same as hearing, "I like to play monopoly". So they will probably stand there waiting to hear your other hobbies, when in reality that might be one of your only hobbies. It might just come down to "playing" chess versus "studying" chess, but I agree that the word "chess" alone sparks completely different thoughts in the minds of an experienced player and a "noob".

Notice Oin is asking 'Does "Chess" Exist?', and not 'Does Chess Exist?". I think his title alone made it clear that he questioning the ambiguity of the word chess and its inconsistency at different levels, not the actual existence of the physical game...

Yes!  They are called "chessmen"...including the queen...and women are forbidden to serve in infantry or become knights (military restrictions) or bishops (religious restriction; clearly chess is not Episcopalian), or go into castly-looking things.  I didn't make this wonderful game up.

We created chess. Its concrete form is a board and pieces -- those certainly exist. It's officially recognized that moving these pieces around means you're playing chess.

The strategy of chess is indeed an abstract concept, but hey, ideas are powerful! Since ideas only exist in our minds, then indeed this interpretation of chess only exists in our minds. But that doesn't mean it's not significant as a result! Ideas change the world. Ideas are sometimes more powerful and revolutionary than concrete objects! It's the ideas that allow us to create new technology.

Gilligan, your latest post brings up some important and interesting issues.

I think the easiest part of your post to talk about comes toward the end. You say the question of the OP isn't so much "does Chess exist" but rather "Does 'Chess' exist." By the latter, it appears to me you intend the question to be "Is the concept 'Chess' well defined, and is it ever instantiated?" As for whether it's well defined, the laws of Chess published by FIDE seem to do the trick. As for whether it's ever instantiated, a game is instantiated when two people agree to abide by its rules. So, the answer is yes.

You said that what's going on in the grandmaster's head is so different from what's going on in the beginner's head that it's strange to say that both processes are instances of a single concept. But however different the brains of these two may be, the fact is both have agreed to abide by the same set of rules, and that's all it takes for 'Chess' to exist.

The other things you brought up in your post are more interesting and harder to be dogmatic about.

When I push a button that starts up a completely automated couch factory, am I making couches?

Does it matter if I own the factory or not?

Does it matter if my employees (or my fellow employees) are doing some of the work, rather than purely automatic mechanisms?

If a person temporarily agrees to abide by certain rules, has he made himself a purely automatic mechanism and thereby lost claim to the product of his labor?

(UCWIDT?)

If a mechanism is governed by rules its creator never dreamed of, and the mechanism causes couches to be made, did the creator make the couches?

And so on...

There are two related questions at play here: Which events belong to which agents? And, which entities are agents?

My own view is this:

Forgetting about whether an entity "has conscious experience" or "knows how it feels" to do such and such, we have every reason to treat it as an agent (up to and including actually calling it an agent and conveying all privileges that pertain therein) to the extent that the best way to explain and predict its actions is by taking what's called "the intentional stance" toward it. Taking the intentional stance toward something is explaining its actions in terms of beliefs and desires (and things like that).

I think that this--an entities explicability under the intentional stance--literally constitutes a thing as an agent. (I get this from a philosopher named Daniel Dennett. I also happen to think there's a separate question of whether the thing has phenomenological experiences or not--I disagree with Dennett here--but if we're just asking which things we should treat as agents, Dennett's answer completely suffices.)

That's how I'd answer the question "which entities are agents?" What about the question "which events belong to which agents?" Basically, here I think that most human actions have shared ownership, though there is often (but not typically) a single human who has the "lion's share" of the ownership so to speak. But to have a share in the ownership of a particular action, one must be in an ongoing dynamic relationship with the elements of that action.

So for example, if I push a button on the coffee maker and then take a shower, and will return later to pour a cup and bring it to someone, it's legitimate for me to say "I'm making coffee" while taking the shower. Because I'm in a continuing dynamic relationship (aimed at coffee-making) with the machine that's doing all the stuff that goes directly into coffee-making.

However, if I'm not going to return to the machine after the shower, it's illegitimate (and I don't think most people would say) "I'm making coffee." I might be able to say I [i]made[/i] coffee, though.

If I set the machine to going with a hundred years worth of beans, and I'm never coming back, then again, it's not legitimate for me to say I'm making coffee--because I'm not in any kind of dynamic relationship with the coffee making machine any more.

If I program a machine to play chess, and play against the machine, am I playing against myself or against a machine? If I've done a good enough job of programming, then many of the machine's moves will be mysterious to me unless I think of it as having beliefs, desires and other intentions. In that case, the machine is an agent, and it takes the "lion share" of ownership for its actions. (My own share is on the order of the small share I have of ownership for the actions of my children.) In that sense, I am not playing against myself--the machine's moves are almost entirely not my own.

If I haven't done a good enough job of programming to achieve a machine that we need to take the intentional stance toward, though, then I am literally simply playing against myself. The machine is making the very moves I explicitly intend for it to make--for the very reasons that I intend for it to make them--explicitly because I made it to do so.

Can we make a machine that plays chess so well we must take the intentional stance toward it? To be honest I think we've already done so, though this is certainly controversial. And I have to be careful about what I mean by "must" here. We could explain the best programs' moves without referring to beliefs and desires by going through lines of code. But the best programs are built in such a way that this would give us no real [i]insight[/i] into their moves. (any more than a full analysis of the state of my neurons gives any [i]insight[/i] into my actions. It may explain and predict them, but if I don't use this analysis to give an account of the brain's beliefs and desires etc... then however accurate my predictions are, I'm missing something important. Again, I should explain that I'm taking this idea straight from someone else--Dennett again.) The best programs are best (most efficiently, most productively and usefully for future technologies) understood in terms of things so much like plans, intentions, desires and so on that I can't make much sense out of denying that they [i]are[/i] plans, intentions desires and so on.

Sorry for the long post--you hit several of my buttons in your own post.

Hmm... I thought I was spamming, but now it appears I'm actually trolling; I guess I must have left the lid off the bucket by mistake.  - Chess.com sure are dangerous waters.

Oh, the irony.  You unintentionally started a serious topic.

Only reputation-seppuku can save my dishonor now;

Let's toss something else into the risk that isn't entirely in the realm of fantasy. Let's suggest that we built our engine to develop it's chess playing algorithm using a series of genetic algorithms that are non-deterministic. After playing hundreds of games, the algorithm being used to play chess by the computere is something it programmed itself to do, not something the programmer told it to do.

Now how do you talk about?

Dangerous?

Dangerouser?

 Sometimes the term "pieces" includes the pawns.

While chess may not exist in the sense listed here, it also means that many other things, such as video games, don't exist either because they are entirely particles on an atomic scale that come together in a very specific way to mean something to us!

You woke us up to tell us this?

Nothing like some pointless metaphysics

There's nothing I enjoy more than a well-written, nonviolent, verbal tsunami ---first Gilligan's, then Kris's ---Wow.... I've never done any surf-boarding, but the thrill I felt just now while rapidly riding the crest of these essays must be something like what it feels like to "catch a really big wave!"  

AND, is it just "coincidence" that following these entries, a subsequent commenter felt inspired to "post a weiner?"   I don't think so... 

Actually, it kind of reminds me of one of those old Burlington ads.

Nice, only NOW do I find that this was a super-old thread I was referred to. Sorry for the bump, guys...

Chess doesn't think, therefore it isn't.  My logic is flawless.

Does nonexistance exist?

Only in the existential sense.